Health Impact Assessment

What is health impact assessment?

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a systematic process that uses an array of data sources and analytic methods and considers input from stakeholders to determine the potential effects of a proposed policy, plan, program, or project on the health of a population and the distribution of those effects within the population. HIA provides recommendations on monitoring and managing those effects (National Research Council [NRC] 2011, 5).

HIA allows for multiple sources of information to provide insight into health concerns and health benefits associated with a policy, program, plan or project. The process and application of HIA allows for greater public health awareness by providing input across disciplines, including those that are outside the health sector. In this sense, the HIA process can “increase decision-makers’, planners’, and other stakeholder's general awareness about health issues and the health effects of actions outside the health sector” (Cole and Fielding, 2007, 397)